of fortune and fashion, with no ambition higher than that of shining in the most outwardly brilliant but inwardly shallow circles, and with no philanthropy wider than that which, it must be said, continually prompted her to help the needy with whom she came in contact, the Marchioness of Humnoddie was surely more to be pitied than blamed for these effusions of a light heart. Little did the frivolous, good-natured woman imagine, as she made her last foolish answer, that even while she was speaking the cannon of Queenstown began to send their deep thunder across the sea; that by the time she had taken her afternoon drive in the park, made her round of visits, and returned to dress for dinner, the Channel Fleet would be crippled, the flower of the army destroyed, the United Kingdom torn asunder, invasion threatening and revolution impending over England itself; and that but for an internal source of strength, unacknowledged, disowned, yet growing yearly, a merit which did not belong to any of the present rulers of this realm—in the crisis about to follow the great battle in Ireland, our British Empire had been fated to see the writing on the wall.
Nine a.m. had struck on the 13th of October 189—.
